Art, Design, Bikes and Beer

David Boekelheide '11 melds bike and beer culture with custom light fixtures for a new bike-centric bar in North Portland.

Art, design, bikes and beer coalesce at the new Hopworks BikeBar on North Williams Avenue in Portland.

Portland’s newest eco-brewpub is located on the ground floor of the recently opened ecoFLATS building, which was designed and built by PNCA alumnus Jean Pierre Veillet ‘97 of Siteworks. Veillet, who also taught at PNCA from 2000–2007, draws upon his sculpture background to produce socially conscious spaces that combine practical know-how with poetry and experience. The building celebrates the talents of other members of the PNCA community: Applied Craft and Design students from the class of 2012 collaborated to design and build a wall and pathway from recycled materials for the green space behind the building.

But look up from your beer and your conversation and you’ll see something truly illuminating: a set of hand-crafted light fixtures made by MFA Applied Craft and Design alumnus David Boekelheide ‘11 out of Hopworks’ growler bottles. Boekelheide, who also worked with Siteworks to design bike parking and lighting for the apartment units in the building above the brewpub, conceived of and executed this lighting project over the Spring semester while working on his graduate practicum project.

“I had decided to use mason jars for thirty-six pendant lights in the ecoFLATS living units above the new Hopworks, so Siteworks asked if I could make the lights for the bar from their growlers,” said Boekelheide. “It plays off of the ready-made and found object theme upstairs and fits with my design philosophy of looking for a path of least resistance.”

The building is a zero net energy, bike friendly apartment complex and this new brewery emphasizes Portland’s passion for cycling and for sustainability: there’s a bike frame gallery, a water-bottle filling station, and two Plug-Out stationary bicycles that generate electricity back into the building’s grid when pedaled. In addition, the tabletops, bar tops, bricks and wood paneling are all constructed from reclaimed materials.

Boekelheide constructed the growler pendant lights using a custom glass-cutting jig followed by thermal shocking.

Upcoming projects for Boekelheide include designing and building a utility bike for Oregon Manifest, some site-specific bike racks for the front of a wellness center, as well as another potential collaboration with Hopworks.

“I’m hopefully designing a couple of chandeliers for Hopworks using some of their beer mugs. Because I’m only making two, they can be more elaborate. When I’m making forty or sixty pieces, I look to simple solutions.”